The Merits of Sonia Sotomayor

“Sotomayor Rose on Merit Alone, Her Allies Say.”  So declares the title of a New York Times article, and if you are a modern “liberal,” there is no need to read on; you have the only talking point you need to defend the President’s choice for the Supreme Court against those inclined to see her simply as an Affirmative Action nomination.

Not quite willing to accept this pre-digested assertion without some supporting facts, however, I decided to actually read the article.

The thrust of the Times story is that Sonia Sotomayor emerged from a hardscrabble upbringing in the Bronx housing projects to succeed as an assistant district attorney, corporate lawyer, and federal judge - all without the help of political bosses that is typically required to advance in the New York political machine.

The article focuses on the critical, maturing period of her career from 1984 through 1992.  “She rose with remarkably little help from the traditional arbiters of power,” such as Governor Mario Cuomo and Mayor Edward Koch, the Times writes.[Note 1.]  Yet this is seemingly contradicted by the very next paragraph, which states that she “found an influential patron in [Manhattan district attorney Robert] Morgenthau” and managed to “catch the eye” of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.  Furthermore:

Her generational timing, too, was fortuitous.  She was an accomplished Latina lawyer at a time when officials sought to diversify the white power structure by promoting more blacks, Latinos and women. 

Similarly, when Ms. Sotomayor was recommended by Ellen Conovitz, Governor Cuomo’s appointments secretary, for a position on the board of the New York state mortgage agency Sonyma, Ms. Conovitz said approvingly, “The Cuomo administration sought more blacks, Latinos and women.”

When Judah Gribetz, a lawyer for the judicial search committee of Senator Moynihan, spoke of his selection of Ms. Sotomayor as a worthy candidate to become a federal judge, he said, “If you live in the end of the 20th century, there was nothing incompatible between diversity and excellence.  Obviously we were looking for people who were representative, and with the right credentials.  She fit the bill.”  And later, the Times article states that in submitting an application for a federal judgeship, Ms. Sotomayor found herself in “an almost accidental elevation”:

But familiar patrons made her case and her timing was good.  Senator Moynihan had made it clear he wanted more female and minority candidates.[Note 1 again, emphasis mine in all quotes.]

So, if an overtly friendly New York Times article, setting out to make the case that Sonia Sotomayor rose on merit alone, cannot help but mention that at every step of the way her heritage and gender were significant considerations in her advancement, what are we to think of Ms. Sotomayor’s qualifications?

  

It is apparent that in a worldview that holds “diversity” as a value, for Ms. Sotomayor to “fit the bill” for a judgeship, it means that she has two qualifications: she is a judge, and she is an Hispanic woman - not necessarily in that order.  Such “credentials” are blatantly racist and sexist.  If the fact of being born Hispanic or female or in the Bronx can be construed as merit, then the very word has lost its meaning and the concept of merit itself is destroyed.

NOTES

1.  “Sotomayor Rose on Merit Alone, Her Allies Say,” The New York Times, 4 Jun 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/us/politics/05judge.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Sotomayor%20Rose%20on%20Merit%20Alone&st=cse .  

Does Being Ethical Pay?

In The Journal Report section of Monday’s Wall Street Journal, the main headline asks the question, “Does Being Ethical Pay?”  This caught my attention because if treated properly, the correct message delivered by such a widely read publication could have a tremendous impact.  What the article is essentially asking is, “Is the moral also the practical?”  A rational ethics should answer with a resounding, “Yes!”

Unfortunately, the article is a dreadful disappointment.  It reduces a potentially eureka-laden topic into an uninspiring call to follow the dull duties of the anti-corporate political left.  At best, the article is a mess of floating abstractions and parroted premises.  At worst, the piece obliterates ethics outright by appropriating the term to refer to actions that are either not ethical or even unethical.

The key to the article’s problems may be found in the paragraph that describes the criteria used to determine if corporate behavior is ethical.  The investigators defined the conditions to be met:

For our purposes, “ethically produced” goods are those manufactured under three conditions.  First, the company is considered to have progressive stakeholder relations, such as a commitment to diversity in hiring and consumer safety.  Second, it must follow progressive environmental practices, such as using eco-friendly technology.  Finally, it must be seen to demonstrate respect for human rights – no child labor or forced labor in overseas factories, for instance.(1)

I would guess that the average businessman who reads this article is not particularly well armed with a rational view of ethics, but holds a haphazard collection of ideas that he has collected over his life from parents, Sunday school teachers, books, movies, college professors,... and perhaps Wall Street Journal writers.  Think about what such a businessman would conclude from this article.  In an effort to be considered ethical by his peers - after all, who wouldn’t want to be ethical? - he would accept the list uncritically as a program of action.  

Let me take each of the article’s criteria in turn to see how well the activities correspond to truly ethical behavior.

1.  “First, the company is considered to have progressive stakeholder relations, such as a commitment to diversity in hiring and consumer safety.” 

A “commitment to diversity in hiring” means that factors such as race, gender, and age ought to be considered as a qualification of employment.  That is, a company must adjust its workforce according to these factors.  

This is outrageous.  To say that the “diversity” of an unchosen human characteristic - diversity of race, for example - is of value to a company is to say that the quality of a workforce depends upon its racial makeup.  This is bald racism, and to smuggle this activity under the category of “ethical behavior” is obscene.  An employer who holds his own long-term self-interest as his ethical standard will judge potential employees on merit alone.  Skin color, heritage, gender, and age are utterly irrelevant.  

To desire the diversity of race, gender, age, etc. is irrational to the same degree - and for the same reason - as desiring the uniformity of these characteristics.  If a workforce happens to be “diverse” - composed of people from every corner of the globe - that’s great.  If a workforce happens to be composed entirely of near-sighted, elderly Jewish women with curly red hair, that’s great, too.  The only thing that matters is that the people are good at what they do.

The other item, a “commitment to consumer safety,” might indicate a proper ethics, but expressed this way it obscures the only valid reason: rational self-interest.  Again, it is in the long-range interest of any company to ensure the quality of its products, and consumer safety is certainly one of the important aspects of product quality.  This is never a problem in a free market because the law holds a company liable for any legitimate harm that it causes consumers, and companies that make unsafe products (or are even merely rumored to make unsafe products) will be driven out by competitors.

 

2.  “Second, it must follow progressive environmental practices, such as using eco-friendly technology.”

To “follow progressive environmental practices” does not mean to respect the property rights of one’s neighbors, which does in fact constitute ethical behavior.  It actually means to subjugate one’s own interests - and indeed, the interests of all human beings - to the alleged “interests” of the planet.

 

It is beyond the scope of this post to elaborate upon the deep irrationality of environmentalism.  I am simply pointing out that it is by no means moral to participate in the surrender of liberty, along with the prosperity, happiness, and achievement that it makes possible, in order to placate policy makers that use apocalyptic visions to advance their own agendas. 

3.  “Finally, it must be seen to demonstrate respect for human rights – no child labor or forced labor in overseas factories, for instance.”

If a “respect for human rights” means a respect for individual rights, then naturally this constitutes ethical behavior.  And “forced labor” is slavery, which is evil by any rational standard.  The problem is that I do not trust that the authors of the article are referring to individual rights, meaning: the right to one’s life, liberty, earned property, and pursuit of happiness.  

One clue to the authors’ meaning is the example of “no child labor.”  What is meant by this?  In some Third World countries, families send their children work to avoid starvation.  To use force to prohibit children from working in these circumstances would be extremely immoral.  The presence of these “sweat shops” is obviously a great benefit to the people, including the children, who work there; if there were a better deal somewhere else, they would leave.  (I am assuming here that they are not literally forced to work, for that would be immoral, as I’ve already stated.  And of course, by “force” I mean forced by people, not “forced by poverty” or “forced by conditions,” which is not force at all in the sense of rights violations.)  

It is tempting for us in western nations that are advanced and relatively free, to observe the squalid conditions and low-paying work in some overseas factories and conclude that this constitutes “exploitation,” since we cannot imagine ourselves actually choosing that kind of work.  But this is a misunderstanding of the context.  The progress of a civilization is made slowly, and Third World nations are in some respects literally centuries behind.  When corporations set up shop overseas, it is a supreme opportunity for the poorer nation to advance.  Everyone benefits. 

(As an interesting aside, a strict interpretation of “no forced labor” would mean that one should never do business with communist countries, since citizens of communist countries are, in every important respect, slaves.  However, I’m not sure that this strict interpretation should be applied in every case.  For instance, China is still technically a communist country, but I think a flourishing trade of non-military or non-“dual-use” goods with them is very beneficially and may by degrees cause the communist aspects to simply wither away.)

P.S.  I sent a greatly abbreviated version of this post as a letter-to-the-editor to the Wall Street Journal.

(1)  Wall Street Journal, Does Being Ethical Pay?, 12 May 2008, p. R-4.